Conferences

FOM: Into the Grey

My final (and long overdue) panel write up covers the Into the Grey panel that discusses the issues of sampling or transforming a work to form a new derivative work as we've recently seen with DJ Dangermouse's Grey Album.

Most of the panel focused on these mash-ups -- as the industry likes to call these types of work at the moment -- and that they are no longer really feasible to carry out legally. In order to be completely legal the publishers need to secure license to use the material from the artist that is being sampled. This artist/label can set the price arbitrarily -- even to the point where they can demand 100% of the mechanical royalties for a track. This means that the sampling artist would need to fork over ALL their earnings on the track to pay off one sample used from another artist. Translated to plain english: The artist/label being sampled is telling the sampling artist to fuck off.

That artist/label being sampled has final control over these decisions, and all too often they will say no, for no good reason. One artist who has played a fair game in this arena is panelist Suzanne Vega. When artists contact her about sampling her work, she evaluates each piece and makes a decision. For the most part she allows people to use her work; one noted exception was when a company wanted to use her voice for a porn soundtrack. She nixed that one, but has allowed many others to sample her work, including her Tom's Diner track, which she admits has benefitted her career.

This panel discussion was interesting all around -- but it wasn't until we got the Q&A session that things got heated -- fast. First off, there were a number of normal questions that the panel answered. But then when Holmes Wilson from Downhill Battle took the microphone, the intensity of the panel got kicked up several notches.

Holmes disagreed and made the blanket statement:

A lot of what's been said today has been patently false.

He went on to point out that Paul's Boutique from the Beastie Boys would not be possible today, since the today's litigous climate would sue the Beastie Boys out of existance. And this has had an effect on creating art.

When the panel members started to object, Holmes's colleague (Nicholas?) took the microphone from Holmes and objected:

There haven't been any black artists on panels in this whole conference. I think you can't talk about sampling without black hip-hop sampling artists here.

After a split second of silence in the auditorium, the tension hit the roof and everyone sunk a little deeper into their seats as they waited for the blast-wave reaction from the moderator. Needless to say, Walter, the moderator, was not happy with this accusation and pointed out that they had spent a great deal of time inviting a wide variety of artists and DJs from a variety of backgrounds and ethnicities. The people who could make it the conference in DC on those given dates were there -- that's what governed the make-up of these panels.

Walter was not amused with the accusations and asked that the microphone be removed from the Downhill Battle guys so they could move on to the next question. It really is shame that two smart guys like Holmes and his colleague could not find more tact to express themselves a little less abrasively in such a public forum.

Next in the question queue up was J. 'Plunky' Branch, whose N.A.M.E. Brand Records has released 30 R&B/jazz albums. Plunky's take was that artists must already take into account that another artist can cover their songs, and as long as they pay the Harry Fox Agency the few pennies per song, all is well. Given this, he suggested that over time artists would warm up to the concept of having other artists sample their work.

That didn't sound like an extreme position to take, but Sany Pearlman it was and he got up and started shouting:

"This is fucking bullshit. Fucking bullshit!"

Neither Plunky nor Walter reacted and Sandy stormed out of the auditorium.

Wow! What a panel. Many more things could've been said -- I wanted to mention the Creative Commons Sampling License, but my comment time was taken up by other hot-heads who had to cause a stir.

Overall, this shows how passionate people are about this topic, and that this is an issue that is far from resolved.

Posted by Mayhem at May 7, 2004 01:22 PM